Winter's Heart
by Silk
Summary: Any scientist will tell you that there are infinite possibilities when it comes to reality. Numerous Earths. Uncountable differences. What if the Winter Soldier program never stopped? What if the program eventually found yet another Soldier to train? BlackHill Avenger's AU. Winter Soldier AU
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

Somewhere in Eastern Europe

The pain was beyond anything she'd ever felt before - and she's been shot and stabbed a few times so she thought she was experienced enough to tell. At least she thought she'd been injured before. The drugs - not painkillers obviously - but a multitude of others was being pumped into her system at regular intervals. More than likely even before she had woken up.

The last thing she remembered... she was positive about... but was she really? It didn't matter, she told herself as she continued to scream and thrash helplessly against her restraints, it didn't matter because it was real...

It had been a mission. But it had gone wrong, terribly wrong. Her hand slipping off the railing... The train... There had been a train... her body tumbling through the air... A gorge...

Her eyes losing sight of... Red hair... There had been someone... Someone important... Someone...

A fog drifted over the memory, wiping it away.

She screamed again, this time in fury that she was unable to finish the memory, so she skipped forward. To the cold... it had been so cold... she'd fallen into a river... Tumbled down the roiling rapids and... onto a boulder... Then a tree crushing... Crushing... her arm...

Her arm?!

Her eyes slid to her side, to the doctors hovering over the bloody, mangled remains of her left arm.

To where it had once been, strong, and healthy. This was where the pain was radiating out from... that and her head... her mind... like ants eating away at a leaf. Things... Memories? Thoughts? Slipping away. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. It was all slipping away like water from a pitcher. Something important. Or was it? She couldn't think. Couldn't concentrate.

There was only...

White.

And pain.

And was there screaming?

White.

And pain.

And...

Another syringe. Another drug plunged into her vein.

It would be hours before the screaming finally stopped. It would be weeks before the scientists declared their work a success.


	2. Chapter 2

Somewhere in LA

Natasha slid her body through a space between yet more boxes and the warehouse shelf above it to the next aisle over and kept moving. She grinned at the curses in Spanish and men yelling in pain and anger, their voices echoing in the large cavernous warehouse around her.

Pepper had told her once that the sound of men's fury makes her calm. That's something coming from a woman who was the CEO of Stark Industries, one of the top technological companies - Tony Stark would say THE top company of course - in the world. She made a day's work out of creating jobs, herding Tony, and making men in suits furious on a daily basis.

Furious men didn't make Natasha Romanoff calm however - it made her happy.

The red head ducked behind a crated refrigerating unit for one of her pursuers to pass before reaching out and zapping him in the neck with stunner built into her armored bracer.

Maria Hill, she mused as she continued on. Maria Hill was an even more entertaining drinking partner than Pepper Potts. They had had drinks the last time Natasha was in town. She'd been a great drunk. Very giggly. She had been surprised Maria had accepted the offer of drinks actually. It had only taken a little over a year. The ex-assassin had asked numerous times - enough that she had started to feel a bit like a stalker - but Hill had always told her that fraternization would unprofessional. And one of the very first things Natasha had learned about Agent Maria Hill and her job at SHIELD was that Hill was very professional about her work relationships. She rarely made friends. Instead, she made... well, underlings. She had soared up the promotional ladder so fast that it didn't pay to get too friendly with a co-worker, because she was soon a higher rank than them in the organizational tree.

Except for Natasha. She refused to not be friends with the woman. Granted it had taken time...

The spy brought her thoughts back to the men chasing after the shadows around her and back to their propensity for crankiness. And the current situation that she had found herself in. Alone in a warehouse full of small time crooks who happened to possess lots of weapons. Crooks that were furious - and shooting at her - who were more than likely to miss and make tactical mistakes. And getting people to make mistakes - ie... furious - was a special ability of hers. Or so she had been told.

Clint Barton had a habit of lying to her to try and get her annoyed though, so she couldn't believe half - OK, less than five percent maybe - of anything he told her. She thought she was a pretty nice person, if she could say so herself.

They were searching for her but she was not about to be spotted by men who hadn't been able to properly put up a security system. Of course, when their boss Felipe Romero had stumbled upon her and she'd had no choice but to take him out - his demise not being as quiet as she's prefer due to his atrocious timing - it had ruffled a feather or two of his guards and now they were... attempting to search for her. The fact that they were spooked and shooting at shadows is what made the operation actually dangerous. And a bit fun.

"Case in point..." she muttered almost silently to herself as an errant gun round hit a metal container above her. Natasha slid around a corner and made for the stairs going back up to the warehouse office. It overlooked the building's once very pristine and organized contents. Half of those contents were now in huge piles as Natasha had arranged for some of the huge warehouse shelves to collapse behind her. Shell casings littered the aisles and bullet holes the cargo on the other half of the shelves still standing, a product of furious South American gangsters who had shot at each other, a shadow or two, and falling containers when they thought they were shooting instead at Romero's phantom killer.

"Plan D," she muttered over the comm system.

"What?! No! Widow you are not... Stick with Plan Alpha!" a voice squeaked in her ear.

She fervently hoped that next time S.H.I.E.L.D. Operations would give her a partner whose voice had passed the prepubescent level. Natasha hated when it was her turn to ride herd and take point on a training mission for raw recruits. It was almost insulting.

"I'm the agent. You're the backup... supposedly. I know what needs to happen on the spot so that, one: I can get out of here without more holes then what I..."

Natasha's left arm went up and she shot a disk out to the man who popped out of the office door before the spy could open it. Blue arcs of electricity danced over him as the stundisk hit him on the chest and he did a satisfying little dance before his eyes rolled up and he slumped to the floor. She dove over him and let her eyes do a quick sweep of the room.

Satisfied, she made for the louver windows that looked over the parking lot only thirty feet below and continued her conversation as she lithely made her way out one of the windows. Magnetizing her boots and gloves with a quick press to a button on her belt, the Black Widow started scaling the wall to the roof.

"...as I was saying. I'm the agent. You're not. Plan D. Do it. NOW. Pickup in 4... approximately. And bring me a towel or two." Natasha finished and cut off the comm. Not necessarily proper procedure - especially during an op - but he could still hear her. She just couldn't hear him unless he actually overrode the circuit. And since he was new - or was acting like it - she doubted he knew how.

The sounds of police and fire rescue vehicles could be heard within a minute of her cutting her communications - a minute she'd spent covering the full length of the warehouse's roof and clambering down to the back end and then over the fence.

Of course, the situation she found herself in now was precisely why this plan was Delta and not the Alpha exit plan. Even Beta and Charlie would have been preferable but that was before Romero's rude and fatal disruption.

Nothing like a high water stage L.A. river with the concrete sides of the canal having no natural way to get out at this section. Disgust washed through her, having a good idea about how clean the L.A. river wasn't. She was up on her shots, so really there was no excuse.

Except that it was water.

That much water was unnatural in the redhead's thinking. And cold. Natasha had considered a few times that she must have been a cat in a past life or two.

She grimaced and dove into the L.A. river, popping up downstream and then going back under when she spotted one or two figures with guns looking over the edge where they thought she might have gone.

Natasha didn't have to go too far downstream despite her worry about exiting up the sides of the canal before she got a chance to clamber out of the moderate flow and haul herself up the sides of the concrete sides. The sirens were now closer to where she'd gone into the water, covering her escape since she knew they'd been called to the warehouse by an anonymous tip that there had been a mass gang shooting. Chaos made for a decent way to cover her tracks.

And it was fun. Even if she hadn't been able to stay and watch... and had to take a swim.

The red head knew she looked like a drowned cat as she climbed the chain-link fence up and around to the overpass. After a quick scan, she was pleased to see no emergency vehicles and just normal traffic on this street.

"You know, Nat... if you wanted to hit the beach and the water, you're a bit East of the Pacific," the familiar voice said, coming over the comm.

Thank goodness for comm's waterproofing, she thought as her lips twitched in response.

"Hawkeye? Did you come all this way to bring me my bikini?"

A black sedan slipped around the corner and headed towards her on the side of the road. Natasha's hand moved slowly down and prepared to grasp a baton, then found it's way to casually lay on her now cocked hip as she glimpsed the driver through the tinted windows. She smirked at Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, through the lowering passenger side window, then popped open the door and sat down with a squelch.

"You don't wear bikinis, remember?" he replied and pulled away from the curb, checking for any incoming traffic or cars behind him.

"Did you bring me a towel at least? I asked that teenager in disguise as an agent for towels," Natasha quipped as she scanned the side-view mirror to see if they had a tail.

"Be nice. They can't all be as ancient as you. Back seat," Clint muttered as he casually did a u-turn.

Natasha reached back to the duffle bag and found more than just a couple of thick towels had been packed for her.

Raising an eyebrow, Natasha started drying her drenched hair. She seriously considered also removing her tactical suit since her spare had been put in the bag as well, but she didn't want to distract Clint. Her eyes scanned her co-worker's face.

It was highly unusual for Clint to be in on a operation without her knowing ahead of time. Planned? Coincidence? Another mission?

The muscles around Natasha's green eyes twitched minutely.

"What happened?" she demanded suspiciously.

"Nat..."

"No 'Nat', Clint. Tell me," Natasha repeated. "What's going on?"

"Just give me a minute. We're close to the evac point."

Natasha's suspicions grew as she noticed he wouldn't meet her eyes and his strong hands clenched rhythmically on the steering wheel. She glimpsed him running the callous on his right hand, the one that he drew his bowstring with, over again and again in a circle on the wheel.

Clint had a lot of tells, which is why she always won against him at poker, and that rubbing of his callous was one of them.

Natasha kept silent and watched him, idly drying her hair and patting down her uniform, trying to get some of river water out of it. After a few moments, Clint pulled into an underground garage and grabbed the duffle bag before getting out.

Quickly exiting the sedan, she caught up with Clint snagging his arm to bring him to a halt to stop him from opening the sliding van door of the team's black van. She ignored the young operations agent peering out of the passenger window and turned Hawkeye around to look at her.

"Clint..." Something like fear colored the words, something rare and unfeigned. Green eyes pierced his own blue as her fingers dug into the muscle on his biceps.

Hawkeye's gaze lowered momentarily, then after he look an unusually deep breath, he raised it back up and met Natasha's resolutely. "It was last minute. Maria was needed on an op..."

"She just got promoted to Assistant Director. Maria doesn't need to go in the field anymore!" Natasha hissed in disbelief.

"Fury said she was needed, since she had been Ops before on the team that had been tracking... In Eastern Europe, there was a shipment of high powered weapons of a kind S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn't seen before and far more dangerous than even Hammertech's military hardware crap. Almost on par with Stark's Ironman tech. Far better than the weapons he built for the Pentagon before he got out of the weapons manufacturing game," Clint stopped himself and focused on what he knew Natasha wanted. "The EAST division had finally tracked a shipment that was being sent by rail on it's way to Russia."

Hawkeye looked his friend in the eye and continued on, with a softer voice. "She wasn't supposed to have to actually get on the train but the Quinjet was spotted... their cover was blown. Hill made the call to evacuate to the train after they used one of the weapons and the Quinjet was going down. She made the call. I don't have all the info after that... but it went wrong. Very wrong."

He turned and visible braced himself in case she hit him.

"I was ordered to come take over your op by Fury. He didn't want you to hear it in a communique while you were here... I told him, I'd come since I was on the West Coast..."

She interrupted him, ignoring the fact that Fury apparently knew about Natasha's feelings towards Hill. He knew. Of course he knew. He was Nick Fury. "Train?! Clint? 'Tchyo za ga`lima! Just tell me!"

"I'm trying, 'Tasha!" Clinton ran a hand through his hair in distress. "She's MIA... They were going over a river... really high up... on a bridge apparently. And she.. she fell... or was pushed. I honestly don't know but Fury insists to not upgrade her from MIA," he continued in what he thought was a reassuring tone. "But the only survivor of the team says she saw what happened and she assumes... Well. No one could handle a fall like that, Natasha. It was over a 700 feet."

"Did they search..." Natasha started to ask, clutching at him harder. She knew Fury wouldn't leave his Right Hand behind. "Of course they did. Of course. But... was there a river? Please, Clint..."

Clint nodded. "Plus it's spring thaw in Europe, which means deeper waters. It's possible, Nat. But it's 700 feet... boulders... freezing temperatures..."

"No! No... she's strong! No!"

The Black Widow was a legend in every intelligence organization on the planet and in the S.H.I.E.L.D. community. Ice cold. A killer. An assassin. A mystery.

Those few of her fellow agents that found out who she was when she was on S.H.I.E.L.D. base or with a team always joked that she didn't have feelings except the manufactured kind. They laughed about it in locker rooms and the mess hall. They said she'd slept with so many men and women, even during her time at S.H.I.E.L.D. that Mata Hari would be jealous.

They didn't think of the Black Widow as human. That she heard the talk, she relied on it. She fed it and let them think she didn't know.

Because she knew the truth. She knew she had been compromised but not in the way that anyone knew.

Well anyone but Clint Barton and Fury. But not how deeply compromised.

Only Maria Hill knew how far down that rabbit hole she might have gone.

Natasha slumped down onto the cement with Clinton's arms automatically reaching out to catch her. She weighed nothing, as if within the last few seconds all of the bone and muscle inside her body had just disappeared. All of her strength gone. In reality the Black Widow was not a legend. Not a myth. She was nothing but a woman who believed she had just lost everything.

Clint opened an eye just far enough to sweep over the living room of the safe house, ignoring the snoring of the rookie agent that Natasha had had the misfortune to be paired with, and looked intently at the bedroom door his friend had sequestered herself behind. The plan was to stay in L.A. overnight and catch the scheduled S.H.I.E.L.D. flight out to New York in the morning. Natasha had not approved, but Clint had argued that the Operations Center at the Triskelion would be the best place right now. The fact was that all the information about the Op and the subsequent search and rescue would be at that centralized location.

Plus Fury would be there for Natasha to yell at. Or attempt to kill. Clint was betting on at least one half-hearted attempt. Natasha liked Nick Fury too much to really make a go of it.

Maria wouldn't have approved. Clint was sure of that.

He knew about Natasha and Maria Hill. The way they had danced around each other ever since the day he'd brought in a newly recruited ex-KGB assassin and the S.H.I.E.L.D. analyst who had wrote the book on the Black Widow - as much as one could write a book on a ghost - had been set together in a room for a legendary debrief. Legendary because Natasha had gone through five agents before Hill and sent them back packing out of the room with nothing for the hours and hours of questioning to show for it. The then just Agent Maria Hill had gone in an after ten minutes of innocuous conversation before finally asking the question Natasha had been waiting for.

"What is it that you want? Not what you think I want to hear or what anyone behind that glass wants to hear... but you."

Clint had looked over the footage of that first meeting between the two and he had seen the minut signs - almost invisible - signs of surprise on the red-head's face. Of course, they were probably faked but she had answered. Not smirked or ignored Hill like the other agents had been. He could see the sincerity on Hill's face and perhaps... perhaps that was the reason why the Black Widow had finally answered a question.

And that had been the beginning. Hill had piqued Natasha's interest. It might have been like a spider with a meal, at first... but days of debriefing, weeks of de-programming, more weeks of training with Clint, and then months of Hawkeye and Black Widow partnering on missions and becoming close as only agents can - all platonic thank you very much. Clint had gotten to know Black Widow pretty well he thought, and he knew that whenever the two women saw each other, that Natasha wasn't playing with her food. That was for other people. Agents. Marks. It didn't matter. They got the Black Widow. Maria got... somebody else.

And Maria... well, Hill was a fortress to all the other agents but she wasn't as good at hiding her physical ticks as Natasha was and Clint was pretty good at spotting them after watching the two in close proximity. He looked forward to seeing Hill's cheeks color with just the faintest of blushes when Natasha came into the room. And his lips always twitched reflexively in sudden amusement whenever he saw the brunette's nostrils flare when the spy walked by her. Clint even had to repress a snort even when Hill had uncharacteristically stumbled over a word or two when Natasha had leaned in far too closer than what would be normal to ask a question.

Natasha hid it much better, of course. But oddly enough the Black Widow's training still seemed to go out the window when it came to associating with Maria Hill. Granted, the two rarely spoke much outside of professional conversations, but the clues were there for Clint to see whenever the two interacted in more personal moments. If he could call her reaction to Maria anything he would call it... smitten.

And no he would never had told Natasha that. He had just kept it all to himself with amusement.

Clint also knew that two of them hadn't moved too far...

He stopped his internal line-of-thought and frowned. Something had changed.

Silently getting from the couch, he made his way over to Natasha's bedroom door. Praying the doorknob wasn't one to squeak Clint turned the handle and then opened it just enough to peek through. Heart clenching at what he found, he still proceeded to press open the wood paneled door fully and take a more thorough but futile search around.

Natasha was gone. AWOL.

Fury was going to kill him.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The room is dark except for the faint light from the street coming around the edges of the blackout curtains and the blue glow reflecting from the tactical lens over her right eye. Continuous information scrolled around the central, highlighting the heat signature before her. The target is sleeping, sprawled across the bed with unconcerned ease perfect.

Bringing up her gun, she moves silently forward and aiming at her target. A hard intentional nudge against one of the feet of the bed, sends her victim rolling out of the covers in surprise, hitting the floor with a yelp.

Narrowing her focus, she concentrates the stream of data solidifying it around the faint outline of the subject. The transparent screen scans and filters everything she sees; sending commands and confirmation from her handler. A few breaths worth of time pass as the startled figure scrambles back up against the wall of their bedroom, shouts of alarm and unanswered cries for help, totally ignored by the intruder.

Sensors scan the features before her, then glow a faint green as the target is identified and approved. He is a dead man.

The pistol bucks three times in her hand; blinding white flashes of light counteracted by the prosthetic over the one eye. In reflex, she closes both against the flash.

The last thing she remembers just before she jerks them open again is the bright flash of light highlighting the color red. Her mind seems clearer but argues with her in confusion. The color... It's the wrong shade. It should be shinier, richer, more... Silky?

Not the deep, dark mess of red and fleshy bits that litters the wall in her mind. Not the red of a blown out head dripping down the once pristine white drywall in front of her. Her right hand cradles a pistol in her hand; trigger finger still tensing but not as much as when she had pulled the trigger and fired the shots.

She pulled the trigger this time. She had shot her target. Did she pass? Fail? Would the pain come again? The pain always came if she fails.

Rapidly blinking her eyes, the thought of the differences in cool all faded as she looked at the vision of bits of what used to be a person's head in front of her.

"Good. You're taking the programmed simulation much better now. Isn't it easier to not fight it? Less pain? Less confusion?" A voice spoke softly near her. Comforting yet controlled.

Easier. Less pain. Was the mission a success? Had she killed someone? Murdered someone?

She flinches internally at the thought. It's wrong... all wrong...

Someone... Why? Someone would be disappointed... Sad... No. No! Please don't be sad.

"Well done, Asset. Simulation disengaging. Gamma Beta Nine," the voice ordered. "Comply."

"Nnnn..." The sound sticks in her mouth as she attempts to un-tighten her jaw to talk. A growl starts low and from deep with her.

Wrong... Compromised... I'm compromised!

White, hot fury blossoms within her as the world of blood and the image of her hand holding a gun bleds away to reveal a huge room of gray hewn stone, filled with banks of computers and medical equipment.

"Nnnn...Nnnno! Maria Hill. Uni... United States. ID D4528C37." The words ripped out of her with snarled force and she locks her gaze on the handful of men and women in lab coats in the room.

This is wrong... All wrong. Where was her team? Where was, Nnn.. No. No. Don't! I want to remember... remember...

She tries to fight off the blackness but it's futile and she falls back into the dark and her dreams as one of the people plunges a sedative into her system.

"The simulation lasted longer that time at least," an attendant notes. "Asset 33 completed the primary objective but didn't recover well from the framework. We'll have to go over the footage and find what triggered her out of the programming, " he concludes as his fingers fly over the keyboard in front of him. "Program 32-b. Partial success

"Re-setting the system to 33-a," another states and heads over to a medical tray.

She begins measuring a dosage in a syringe and then picks up a bottle filled with a deep blue fluid. "Doubling the dosage this time and including the scheduled first dosage of XT-7 as well."

"Noted. Proceed."

The first dose was meet with barely a flinch as the contents were injected into the IV line in the subject's right arm and hits her system.

The second dose brings blue eyes flashing open and moans of discomfort.

If anyone in the room actually cared, the figure would have been pitiable.

Physically retrained by numerous reinforced straps from head to toe, with an attendant quickly muzzling the Asset with a buckled bit in her mouth to quiet the noise. There was almost no way to tell race or sex with all the bruising. The most obvious identifying marker was that the person's left arm wasn't there; only a well bandaged stump at the shoulder joint. Her blue eyes were open and staring through what looked like a transparent virtual reality visor.

Pale skin. Mid-length dark hair; greasy and damp from hours and hours of stress and pain. Long, slim feminine fingers were the only part of the body that could move besides the eyes. The flesh marred by numerous scratches and almost sunken in, due to the rigid clenching and un-clenching of the fingers. All of the fingernails were broken, torn, and bleeding - evidence of the only physical distress the person could express being so restrained - and they seemed to almost glow white from the pressure of repeatably digging into the wood of the chair arm.

One of three people around the prisoner, all dressed in clean, pressed clothes and pristine white lab coats, hovered around the figure hooking medical leads up to various parts of their captive's body. He moved with professionalism and took no liberties as they moved edges of clothing out of the way to attach the adhesive ends to the skin undernewth; going right back to the bank of computer systems when he was finished.

For a time the only sound in the room was the low hum of the machines, the tic-tap of keys on keyboards as a command was entered, the soft slap of shoes as the two men and one woman went back and forth, and the strongly muffled sounds of distress coming from the figure in the chair.

Then, as if rehearsed, they all completeedy their preparations and took seats in front of control stations.

The thick armored door suddenly opened into the room and then closed behind a man who strode into the room as if he owned it. He was a good looking man, with blond hair and chiseled features. Piercing blue eyes gazed unwavering at his captured prize as he strode forward through the room. Tall and well built, he had a military bearing but wore unremarkable clothing. He smiled thinly and looked over the seated figure closely.

Finding everything in order, he stood at ease in front of her and began speaking, his thick, cultured German accent sending a jerk of surprise through the prisoner at his first words. Blue eyes met blue, the caprice's stopping their frantic swiveling around the room. With a source to focus on, even the pained sounds lowered in volume; just soft moans as a particular wave of pain went through her. They were low enough that he could be heard easily over them.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Agent Maria Hill. I do hope you'll forgive the reception and your current circumstances, but you've brought us a unique opportunity which we just cannot pass up." He paused and seemed to be listening to the agent's muffled sounds as if he could understand them.

"Ah, yes. Please forgive my manners..."

He stepped back and gestured to the the men and woman at the desks behind him.

"These good people have been working diligently since you were handed to them. Weeks of dedication. They're to be commended. I know you can't appreciate that, but HYDRA does." He grinned as Hill's eyes narrowed and her moans of pain became a growl.

His smile broadened and he stepped closer again, leaning forward for a moment. "This is the part where the evil genius does his monologue. I just can't resist. Fury's newest second in command? I'm enough of a narcissist that I'll readily admit to enjoy telling you about what you're in for... while you can remember it."

The man started to pace around the room, his arms waving dramatically as he talked.

"Yes, HYDRA. I know, I know. HYDRA was destroyed," his fingers did little quotes in the air and he gave a little chuckle.

"But it does exist, Agent Hill... or should I say Asset 33. You're our property and our mission now; part of a very special program with a long, proud history. The reports have told me that your programming is progressing nicely. Luckily for you, it's much easier than it used to be and the drugs have advanced exponentially since Asset 1."

The man stopped his pacing a moment and looked at Maria with almost a sorrowful expression.

"But alas no less painful than back then. There is a part of me that regrets that. However, the technology has improved so much! Virtual reality... such a dream to use. Tests are all virtual along with technologies developed over the decades, encoded to the human brain. HYDRA has gotten very good at wiping an asset's mind and re-creating reality. You'll be even more fortunate than all of the prior generations of assets. I almost envy you."

Spotting the tray with the blue vial, he went over to pick up the small bottle. Holding it so she could see it, he continued. "Captain America was not the first Super Soldier you know. HYDRA's Johann Schmidt was - now there was a soldier. The serum has evolved and progressed along with our programming techniques since it was recreated by our scientists back then; and it's running through your veins."

"Of course, it does have it's drawbacks depending on the individual, but the positives outweigh the negatives to us," he stopped and picked up a syringe. Filling it midway with the serum from the vial, he put the vial back down and stepped to the IV shunted in her remaining arm.

It took only a moment to release the fluid into her veins and the screams to start again. He ignored them and spoke to her one last time, even if it was only to himself since his audience was no longer listening.

"But then you won't remember the negatives. Or even care."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

As one of the world's most infamous spies and assassins - you try to keep some room at the top of the list for your own modesty - you know it's possible to completely drop out of sight. It's harder in this day and age of information data, the internet, and technology but it is possible.

Usually it requires a country with a low tech and economic base, but it can be done in others.

It's all about tradecraft. And that's also how to counter it.

But there should be absolutely no way to lose... A body. The Assistant Director of SHIELD.

Maria Hill.

The East Division had immediately mobilized and sent out Search and Rescue teams for the train and any survivors. They'd found a single near-empty, damaged railway car and one wounded survivor. The half-dead agent had set off her emergency transmitter after she'd been wounded, pulling herself up onto the roof of the freight car before it had been emptied but for the bodies of her teammates and left behind on a railway branch.

It was no wonder they'd abandoned it, with the shape it was in. SHIELD was still examining the remnants for clues to it's contents, but what was left of the structure plainly told the investigative team that the Agent Hill's group had put up quite the fight.

Their bodies were all accounted for but for Maria.

So Natasha decided to do her own disappearing act without waiting for orders. Granted, it was harder to vanish in LA, but still possible. Twenty-five hours of travel later she was in Europe, hunting down whomever she could to find a hint of Hill or the people that killed her team… and possibly her.

Natasha rotated her jaw and let her lips twitch minutely. It was the only sign that she allowed that showed her annoyance at her current situation - a facial tic that she broadcasted intentionally. The man in front of her was doing his best to try her patience - without even trying to.

She'd gone all out. Little black dress, strappy heels... Heck, she'd even did the deep shade of red lipstick that General Georgi Luchkov before her was known to like on his mistresses - he bought them enough of it at least.

A tip that he was going to show at a local restaurant with his most recent paramour and a nice hefty - and very public and in plain view of the closest bodyguard - tip to the maitre d' and she'd been seated at the table next to his.

A few words in english during a very staged phone call and she knew she'd been made - all intentional of course - and one of Luchkov's bodyguards had knocked her unconscious when she was in the ladies room.

Granted, the headache was annoying but a small price to pay to get the General and two of goons alone and in a warehouse with her. She'd had more pain from hangovers than what these sorry excuses for Russians were doing to her.

Following the weapons had been part of her plan when she'd disappeared from Los Angeles and SHIELD's oversight.

Not like eastern europe had a lack of sources for illicit black marketeers, she thought wryly as one of the General's minions threw another punch to her jaw. Russia, Chechnya, the Ukraine... Both European and Asian continents were a black marketer's gift shop.

Another blow rocked her head to the side.

Even Clint hits harder than this. He hits like a child.

She wiped her tongue over the small cut on her lip and suppressed a smile. Luchkov was an imbecile, she decided. Show a little leg and the magic of the Little Black Dress and poof… like magic he thought Natasha was a better lamb to feast on than the entrée at the restaurant.

Tease him with a little of the right information and he thought she was a courier from a rival associate. Talk about guns - especially the high tech guns the sole survivor of the attack had said the attackers had used - and he drooled more than he had over his mistress' choice of low cut dress.

Unfortunately, he wasn't giving her information she actually needed to find Maria. Nothing.

Natasha blinked in surprise as her burner phone rang and did her best not to sigh. It was obvious who the caller had to be. Clint knew better and knew that she'd contact him when she could.

Which meant the "interrogation interruptus" could only be from SHIELD.

Of course.

She'd left one or two clues behind in the weeks that she'd scoured several european cities and their intelligence networks for a sign of the missing - not dead... no... missing - Maria Hill. It had been a fruitless search so far but she'd left information she'd found that was still useful to SHIELD in various dead drops.

Fruitless, because almost all of the information that had lead the original SHIELD team to the single railway car and the weapon shipment had disappeared. There was no trail to follow because there were no records of there ever having been a train to begin with.

Even the SHIELD files from the East Division reports on the incident had been corrupted. Not completely, and not even just those particular files, but a virus had been transferred into the Ops system - one of the most advanced and secured computers in the world - and had wormed its way through several rooms of hard drives before being stopped. It had ruined the files of numerous projects - including Maria's original op files.

Someone obviously didn't like them investigating and a full internal and external hunt was happening now as well.

Natasha still had access - Fury wasn't that pissed at her apparently - and had kept track of the recovery process; the search and rescue reports, and the After Action Reports from the the sole surviving agent before all of the files and evidence had disappeared from the mainframes.

It had been enough to give Natasha a place to start, but lead after lead had led to bare whispers only and no concrete evidence or further leads. So she'd gone as far underground as she could, making her way across the continent infiltrating weapon research facilities, calling in numerous markers, and interrogating black market contacts.

Like General Luchkov, a man who couldn't even tell that he was the one being interrogated and not his supposed prisoner.

Tucking the phone under her chin when he agreed to let her speak to whomever was on the other side - amatuer - she greeted her caller.

"We need you to come in."

Coulson... figures. He's lucky she liked the man. Maybe the next time she saw him she'd take his precious trading card set of Captain America hostage. That'd show him.

"Are you kidding? I'm working!" she argued.

"This takes precedence."

"Not to me it... no. I'm in the middle of an interrogation and this moron is talking like he's trying to impress a girl in high school."

"I don't talk," Luchkov muttered in disagreement.

She let an eyebrow rise up out in a look of disbelief at the man. Really, what kind of interrogation techniques did they teach in Russia nowadays?

"Fury needs you in on this. Barton's been compromised."

Her breath stilled for a moment in true surprise.

The man who brought her into SHIELD instead of killing her as he'd been ordered. The brother who treated her like an actual human being instead of a weapon to point at a target... she'd met his wife... his kids... Who was the only one who really knew about how she felt about... Maria… Maria would understand. Maria... Clint...

"Let me put you on hold," the redhead said and then gestured with a nod for her captors to take the phone back.

Bruce Banner had seemed such the mild, mannered scientist… even when he yelled at her in an attempt to see how she would react to him bellowing and lunging for her. She'd pulled her gun out from under the table and was more than ready to pull the trigger - even though she knew it wouldn't end well for her or the men outside… or the city - but that was far different situation than having the monster inside the man destroying everything in it's path with only you as it's target.

Natasha tried to think of something, anything else but the color green that filled her mind's eye.

Green - the color of anger.

She'd never before seen such monstrous fury, as if the Hulk was the very emotion of anger made flesh. If he'd had his way - and if she'd been any slower or less agile - she'd had been a smear on the steel walls and pipes of the helicarrier after one blow.

That was power.

But it wasn't the fact that she believed that she had been about to die that was causing her to freeze up currently. Nor was it solely because of the overpowering fear that could only come from being hunted by an giant, gamma, green rage monster could be. No, it wasn't just that - although a small portion of her mind staring dully at the wall across from her had to admit that that fear was a part of it. No, it was also another emotion that was freezing her in place after she had escaped the Hulk.

This battle of gods, magic, and super humans was beyond what she knew. And while she had used her wits and wiles to trick the plan from the god Loki, there was nothing in her arsenal that could save her from gods and magic.

She tried to settle herself, the sounds of battle and the Hulk's roars echoing down the passageway but the adrenaline kept pouring into her. Sweat trickled down her temples and forehead, the smell of her own fear acrid in her nostrils.

Instead of moving, she was immersed in a memory loop; both of a time before when she had come closest to death and the flight of desperation she had just experienced. Both so alike and yet so different.

It was regret that mixed with her fear; a life built by the Red Room with nothing… no one really of her own to show for it. First it had been a life of using her particular set of skills in the service of Mother Russia and the Red Room. Then to the highest bidder after she'd left their chokehold. And then currently utilizing them in the service of SHIELD, under Fury's direction.

Years of assassination, treachery, theft of secrets, and many other jobs had made her a target. Natasha had accepted the danger, it was part of the consequences of who she was. But it wasn't until after she'd joined SHIELD that she'd come as close to death as she did today.

It was a supposedly simple extraction and protection mission of a defecting Iranian scientist that had almost killed her. Two shots had rang out and destroyed her tires sending them them over a cliff. Years and years of training and skill had saved them both, but then in the next moment the pain had hit as she hovered over the scientist to cover him. They'd gotten out, only to be shot by a silver armed man that she'd only heard of as being a myth. Natasha had lain over the now dead Iranian man, a bullet through her back and out the front of her midsection, and she knew death was coming to collect her.

As her breath labored and her body slowly bled out, only one thing had gone through her mind back then. Not survival; not on the rarely travelled mountain road where it had been improbable for a rescue. Not the fear of death - she was Russian after all, death was inevitable. No, what she regretted back then was that she was going to die alone, that only one or two people might miss her. Clint and maybe Director Fury.

But it was that same regret and distress that threatened to swallow her whole as she currently sat huddled in the guts of the SHIELD helicarrier. Though there were more names to add to that list now; also more regret to wallow in along with the panic that gripped her.

"It's Barton. He took out our systems. He's headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?" From her earbud the voice of Fury cut into her thoughts like a lifeline.

Clint… One of the few on her list of regrets, whose very mind had been stolen by a thief of a god. Clint… brother and friend.

Natasha gathered herself in an instant and then reached up to her ear comm to reply.

"This is Agent Romanoff. I copy."

She may not be able to go toe to toe with a green, almost god-like creature or even an actual Asgardian one, but she knew Hawkeye.

The Black Widow had a mission - had focus. Fear and regret faded to determination. 

Aliens. It just had to be murderous, nasty looking - in need of some serious dental work - aliens with a penchant for world domination and destruction.

Thank God for Thor and those lovely arms of his, or she'd swear all aliens were a Level 1 menace. Granted he was also a menace, along with his "Warriors Four" buddies, but at least he was rather charming. Natasha might be slighted tempted - if you bribed her - to admit that Lady Sif was rather pleasant as well the one or two times they'd met.

At least Thor's loud and boisterous self made him far more enjoyable and fun to be around than Tony. The god could almost drink as well as a Russian… almost.

But Loki's chitauri buddies were absolutely not fun to be around.

Natasha was beyond exhausted. Flying a chitauri craft - hey she steered it, that counted as flying which is more than Clint had done - after battling alongside the entire Avengers' team on the ground. How was she supposed to keep up with enhanced men, a god, and a man in a robot suit?

But she'd done it and now she was waiting for the final order to close the portal.

Avengers. Fury really needs to think up better names for things. It's like he pulls these things out of a hat.

Natasha waited, the scepter already through the forcefield that protected the Tesseract. Doctor Selvig had assured her it would work, that the Scepter touching the Tesseract itself would shut down the space portal.

And she believed him… she had to believe him, otherwise it was all for nothing.

The Scepter seemed to tremble in her hands as if it too was waiting… or fighting her. She could sense the difference between the staff in her hands and the Tesseract before her. One felt… Vast, as if the entire universe lay within it. The one in her hands she disliked immediately. Besides the knowledge that Loki had used it to impale Coulson, it reminded her of the Red Room and how they controlled her; brainwashed her… made her mind theirs. Natasha could almost feel it's tendrils reaching for her thoughts, willing her to submit.

Submit.

It was such a small thing to submit to such overwhelming power. There was no way she could fight gods and magic, so how could Natasha believe that she stood a chance against the power of the Scepter?

Surely it could give her whatever she most desired; together they could do great things. And as a reward… Blue eyes flashed in her mind's eye. Eyes so familiar. So unlike the blue glow… Stormy blue…

"Come on, Stark," Natasha whispered over the comms like a prayer; refusing to yield despite the yearning to.

Submit.

"Close it." Rogers commanded but she could hear the faint reluctance in his voice.

Wrenching her focus back, the Black Widow clenched her teeth and pressed the tip of the Scepter against the Tesseract bringing down the pulse of energy and beginning the closure of the portal.

It was only later after the entire team - including Stark the lucky devil - had gathered in the half-demolished ruin of a Lebanese restaurant and she'd eaten her shawarma, that she felt she could finally take a breather. Hitching a ride back to the helicarrier and her quarters, she was ready for a hot shower and some sleep.

It was then, alone in her cabin with her thoughts, that the loneliness came rushing back.

Sure, they'd rescued Clint - she'd be thinking about that recalibration move whenever he annoyed her - and she thanked God that the man she considered brother was safe and himself, but at that moment she wished she had something more. Right now he was probably on a secure line talking to his wife and at that thought jealousy surged within her. Not at Laura - never at Laura or the kids - but at what they had… What she wished she had. What she always seemed to be denied.

What the Tesseract had offered to her, if only she would capitulate to it. Closing her eyes to rest she thought of what she had been tempted with.

Maria with her beautiful dark hair, strong jaw, and stormy blue eyes.


End file.
